Kati Wiegand
(ktann2@aol.com)

Technical Writing is More Complex than Baseball!
When I entered English 424, I assumed for it to be similar to my Introduction to Technical Writing class, but just a bit more advanced. I assumed we'd be writing memos and business letters to strengthen our skills. In a way, I was right, but in a way, I was also wrong.

I am a huge baseball fan. To me, this class reminded me of the game of baseball. To an outsider, it looks easy to understand, and even *gasp* boring. Baseball looks like the same thing over and over again. Technical Writing looks this way to those who aren't interested in the field. How hard can writing memos be, right? Wrong. Both baseball and Technical Writing are complex areas, with many layers to be discovered.

To be honest, when I first entered this class, I thought it would be a breeze. I did rather well in ENG 324, and I consider myself to be a strong writer. Turns out, there was a lot that I didn't know about Technical Writing. I didn't know that people wrote essays about all the different problems in Technical Writing. I didn't know what rhetoric was, or even that I used it on a daily basis. I was a rookie, waiting in the dugout to be called up to bat, completely clueless and utterly terrified.

Luckily, when it was time to do the work and understand the reading, I succeeded. I learned what Technical Writing was all about. It's not just the documentation (memos, business letters), but also what the documents do in the contexts they are in. I learned how to write for a specific audience and how to better express my ideas in writing. Now, I know that rhetoric is a way of communication that reveals depths of relationships and brings more meaning to the text. Rhetoric is always in action.

In class, we read a lot about the problems in technical writing. For instance, more research needs to look at writing from a social perspective and the way that people are individuated has significant consequences for their careers. At first, I didn't understand how the readings connected to the text, but as each project went on, it became clear that we were touching on these concepts in each of our documents.

Overall, I believe that I have learned a lot of things which I will use in the future. For instance, I know that I need to find my audience before I write and I also have a much better understanding of rhetoric and how it works. I may have started out as a rookie, but by the end of this class, I think I'll end up in the Technical Writing Hall of Fame. ;-)

The Team Introduction Memo (TIM) and Process Documentation Memo (PDM): Kati & The San Francisco Giants

Contextualizing the TIM & PDM
Starting Out as Part of the Team...
Our first assignment was to write a memo about ourselves. I thought it would be easy and created a memo about everything in my life, my fiance, my best friend in South Dakota, and my pomeranian. Turns out, Professor Benninghoff didn't just want any old memo. He wanted a memo that connected us to our teammates. He wanted something that connected to technical writing. He wanted us to have examples (support), explanation of how the evidence linked to technical communication, and also for us to specifically write what our claim was. The PDM was basically a memo directly to Professor Benninghoff stating what we learned through our experience with writing a memo. In it, we were to write specific changes and how we learned these new ideas.

Reflecting on the TIM & PDM

First Time Up to Bat...
I'll be honest. When I first realized that my memo was incorrect, I felt completely lost. I wasn't sure how to connect anything to my classmates, since I didn't know any of them personally. After looking over the information that I had to offer, I decided to focus on my job experiences. I wrote for both the Ann Arbor News and San Francisco Giants web site. In these situations, people depended on me to come through for them, and I did. I decided that my classmates should know that I am a dependable person and have no problem with meeting my deadlines. I also added "talking heads" to my memo, which made it look more organized. Looking back, the assignment was pretty easy. If I had just analyzed my audience and the right information before hand, it would have been a lot easier!

Explain Batting When You're Batting...
One thing that baffled me when I started ENGL 424, was when Professor Benninghoff said, "I want you to talk about riding the bike as you're riding the bike." Eeeek! This was a new concept to me. Assignments seemed hard enough just doing them, but then I had to analyze them as I was writing them? Luckily, once I got into things, it wasn't too difficult. PDMs were a new thing to me. Basically, a PDM is a written record of how you changed your assignment and why. For my PDM, I wrote about each draft and how I changed it from draft to draft. I added things that I learned in class, too.

The Creative Rhetoric Scenario:Derek Jeter (He's so dreamy!) & Rhetoric

Contextualizing the Creative Rhetoric Scenario

Swing, Batter, Batter
Rhetoric, rhetoric, rhetoric. I'm thinking that Eastern should really change the name of ENGL 424 to Technical Writing AND Rhetoric. This assignment was basically to show what we knew about rhetoric and how we could apply it to everyday life. Professor Benninghoff said "the CRS is designed for you to show: 1) what skilled 'rhetors' you already are, and 2) your new and complex understanding of rhetoric and its relation to everyday life, writing and technical writing." Couldn't have said it better myself. For the assignment, we had to write up a fake dialog that we would have with someone. In the dialog, we would explain rhetoric to them, but we could not just say, "This is what rhetoric is." That's where the CREATIVE part of the assignment came into play!

Reflecting on the Creative Rhetoric Scenario

Any Assignment Where I Can Write about the Hottest Shortstop in the World is Bound to Be Fun!
For my assignment, I decided to write about my love for the New York Yankees and more importantly, Derek Jeter. Of course, I had to include my real love, so I created a dialogue for me and my fiance, Mark. In it, my grandma had made a "positive" comment about Derek Jeter, but she used rhetoric to twist the meaning around and give it a low-blow. I used my grandma's remarks to tell Mark about rhetoric.

The easiest part of this assignment was writing the dialogue. I love to creatively write, so I had that done real quick. The introduction was a little harder because I wasn't sure what I needed to introduce. (Honestly, I revised it once the 424 Projects Rubric was handed out in class!) The analysis at first was a little tough because I wasn't sure what I needed to explain. I knew what it was about, but I had to explain it to other people, which sometimes is tricky! Eventually, I wrote about how certain people talk to one another, and how they related to one another through this rhetoric.

The Airbag Letter Case: Cups and Airbags Save Lives!

Contextualizing the Airbag Case

Left-Handed Batter or Right-Handed Batter?
The airbag case was tricky because we had to send one letter out to many different people. In the previous assignments, we knew who our audience was. (It's important to know who your audience is! Just like a pitcher needs to know if his next hitter is a righty or a lefty!) We had four different cases to consider, but we still needed to have a pretty basic letter that would address everyone's concerns. (For the record, our clients were concerned with how safe their airbags were and many of them wanted an on/off switch for their cars.) For the letter, we needed to do three different things. First, we had to offer instructions on how to use airbags safely. We also had to explain recent federal regulations and also represent the genuine concerns of the company. Seems easy, but it took me a while to get it all together nicely.

Reflecting on the Airbag Case

The Whole Letter Thing is a Wild Pitch
The whole "letter" thing threw me off here. Before this class, I knew the format of a letter. So, when I heard we were writing a letter, of course, I wrote it in strict letter format. It didn't go over so well. It seemed really impersonal and didn't flow well. It was during peer editing when I had the chance to look over what my group mates had done with the assignment, when I decided to change the format of my letter. I changed it into a Question & Answer format. This worked well because my information was more organized and it sounded like the company was truly concerned. I was really pleased with how I covered all of the tasks and was able to make it look professional and organized.

The Context & Genre Analysis Project: Baseball Players Need Tans, Too!

Contextualizing the Context & Genre Analysis Project

Nearing the End of the Season...
Ahhh, the final project of the semester. This one was the most complex and involved project of the term. In the CGA, we had to involve the concepts and problems in the field of technical communication in our papers. We had to take a place of work, or a class, and look over the context and one genre of the place. Then, we had to apply the concepts of the readings to our place of work. It was really quite the research project!

The report itself had many different parts. There was an abstract, which states the project; an introduction and background section, which introduces the assignment, including the problems in the context and a methodology section, which explains how you got your data. The major sections were the context and genre section and each was divided into data and discussion parts.

Reflecting on the Context & Genre Analysis Project:

Kati Wiegand: MVP of CGA & ENGL 424 (Haha, just kidding!)

Overall, I found the CGA project to be very straight-forward. There were a few classes where I was confused on what should go under the introduction section and what should go under the methodology section, but after listening in class and looking over my peers' papers, I figured it out. At first, I thought it would be hard to connect the things we learned in class to a tanning salon, but towards the end of the project, I was able to see how my context connected to the readings. For instance, we read about how writing happens in "real world" contexts, such as the tanning salon which I wrote about. The sheet that was given to us to fill in helped me out alot. I was able to go back to my notes and see what key things I needed to take with me from each reading. Even though there were times where I thought I could never connect technical writing to a tanning salon, I was pleased with how my CGA turned out and how I was able to connect the two very different (yet similar!) things.